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A recent poll in the US show a disturbing trend.In a USA Today / Gallup poll shows that almost 40% of Americans acknowledge having prejudice against Muslims. A similar percentage, 39%, favor subjecting Muslims to stricter security measures including carrying a special ID. 41% favored Muslims undergoing more intensive security checks at airports. Most respondants said that they don't personally know a Muslim. While this is not unexpected in the USA, where the right wing media has been demonizing Muslims even before September 11, the fact that Canada has similar negative views of Muslims is saddening.

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Mainstream media and neo-cons in the USA continuously paint a rosy picture of post-Saddam Iraq, to retroactively justify the invasion.Despite that, a leaked memo from the US Embassy in Iraq shows a very different picture.Here is the memo itself, and the article in the Washington Post on it. BBC also has coverage.

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The current US Administration has made it known to the rest of the world that its military adventures abroad are motivated by values such as "freedom" and "democracy".The irony is that only one in four of Americans can identify more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution (Freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petitioning the government). This is about the same as those who can name all the five members of the Simpsons family ...

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In a recent speech, US President George W. Bush stated that his policy in Iraq is to "stay the course" and not "allow the terrorist to break our will" and "not permit Al Qaeda to turn to Iraq to what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a safe haven for terrorists and a launching pad for attacks on America". One should remember that none of these "terrorists" were in Iraq before the USA invaded in 2003. Al Qaeda had no presence before that time. These "terrorists" flocked to Iraq as a direct result of the invasion: mainly fuelled by the mere presence of invading forces inflaming emotions by the invasion, but also by the instability and power vacuum in the country that insued after the Saddam regime fell.

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The Pentagon has finally stated that the old rules on prisoners no longer apply. They continue to use the term "detainees" for those in Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib as opposed to the term "prisoners". From the start, those prisoners had the label "enemy combatants", so as to deprive them from the Geneva Conventions.This continuous rewriting of the rules as the game progresses will only cause more resentment towards the USA, and damage to its image worldwide.

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When news leaked that the U.S. State Department annual report on terrorism showed that terrorist incidents have in fact increased after the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration decided to scrap the report, since it shows that the world is not safer after this invasion.